Getting rod of Barbarians

[Qwertqwert]

It's around 1100 AD and I still havn't been able to get the Barbarians out. I selected raging barbarians but it hasn't seemed to effect any other civilization anywhere near as much as me. But anyway, I have an extensive military now, but how to I just get rid of barbarians completly?

[Urban Ranger]

Barbarians spawn in the fog of war. So post units around the board to give you vision.

Check around for barbarian cities. Capture or burn them.

[Rook]

I usually post sentries to eliminate the fog of war like Ranger said, also I put some units on explore and they usually root out barbarian units lurking about.

[Spiderjeru]

Wow, my bad. From the title I thought this was a post in the 'Conan Love' Forums.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Spiderjeru
Wow, my bad. From the title I thought this was a post in the 'Conan Love' Forums.

It sounded like a D&D magical item to me, one that either summoned barbarians to fight for you, or granted the wielder barbarian-like abilities.

[Zoid]

I don´t know what´s worse. Barbarians or Mings banning rod

[Zoid]

Re: Getting rod of Barbarians

Originally posted by Qwertqwert
It's around 1100 AD and I still havn't been able to get the Barbarians out. I selected raging barbarians but it hasn't seemed to effect any other civilization anywhere near as much as me. But anyway, I have an extensive military now, but how to I just get rid of barbarians completly?

1) Barbarians attack the human player far more often than the AI civs, it´s coded into the game.

2) The only way to get rid of barbarians is to kill them and take their cities. When you get past the renaissance the spawning stops at least...

[Badtz Maru]

Re: Re: Getting rod of Barbarians

Originally posted by Zoid


1) Barbarians attack the human player far more often than the AI civs, it´s coded into the game.

No it isn't, where did you hear that? The only way barbarians treat AIs different from players is that if a barbarian unit has to choose between attacking two units of equal strength, one AI and one player, it will TEND to choose the player because it sees the player unit as being weaker - the AI gets a 40% bonus vs. barbarians on all levels, while the player bonus vs. barbarians is smaller, except on Settler difficulty. So, on a tactical level, a barbarian will prefer the player in some situations - but it would prefer to attack an AI Warrior (2.8 strength in it's eyes) over a player Archer (3.15 on Noble). These kinds of situations are rare, though.

On a strategic level, when deciding what city to send troops towards, this is not a factor.

It may seem like the barbarians don't attack the AIs as much, but that's because 1. 99% of the time you don't see what's going on between AI civs and their barbarian neighbors and 2. the AI has a lot less trouble with barbarians because of their huge bonuses.

[Zoid]

Countless posts in this forum claim that barbs attack the human player far more often than the AI, I think this is a part of the advantage the AI get on higher levels.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Zoid
Countless posts in this forum claim that barbs attack the human player far more often than the AI, I think this is a part of the advantage the AI get on higher levels.

So, you're claiming that something is 'hard coded' based on a bunch of gameplay anecdotes distorted by observer bias, despite the fact that the people who actually coded the game say this is not so. Why would the programmers lie about this when they don't deny the other advantages the AI gets? They admit that they give the AI combat bonuses against barbarians because the AI has trouble dealing with barbarian attacks, if your belief was true they'd surely say 'We also made the barbarians prefer to attack the player'.

If you look at civ4handicapinfo.xml, where all the variations between the difficulty levels are listed, you'll see nothing about AI chances to attack that varies between players and AIs.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Zoid
Countless posts in this forum claim that barbs attack the human player far more often than the AI, I think this is a part of the advantage the AI get on higher levels.

They attack the human more because the AI gets so much of a bonus against them. Barbs will go after the weakest target, and that usually means the human because of this discrepancy.

[Zoid]

That´s what I meant. But Badtz seems to have a different opinion...

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Willem


They attack the human more because the AI gets so much of a bonus against them. Barbs will go after the weakest target, and that usually means the human because of this discrepancy.

This doesn't determine what cities they send troops towards, just which troops they attack with a unit when multiple targets are selected. The AI only takes into consideration information available to them, and they don't know what's defending a city until they send a unit there.

Here's an example of a relatively rare situation where the AI bonuses vs. barbarians could cause the barbarian to attack a player instead of an AI:

A barbarian unit is adjacent to two Warriors. Both Warriors are at full strength, on plains, have no promotions, and just moved to their current square the previous turn - in short, they should be exactly equal in strength, 2.0.

The game is on Noble difficulty, where the AI has a 40% bonus vs. barbarians and the player has a 5% bonus.

The barbarian unit can attack either of these units that turn. The odds are that it will attack the player. This is because the barbarian AI sees the player Warrior as being 2.1 strength (due to the 5% bonus) and the AI Warrior as being 2.8 strength.

Now, you can see how a number of factors could make the barbarian AI more likely to attack the AI civilization, because that hypothetical situation is very unlikely to happen. What if the barbarian is only adjacent to the AI unit, and would have to move another turn to attack the player? It's still probably going to attack the AI, because it doesn't seem to consider other units in it's area, just ones it can attack - I have NEVER seen a barbarian unit move past a strong unit to attack a weaker one, even if the weaker one is a sure-win (like a worker). This is probably because this kind of behavior would be easily exploited by the player - we'd lure the barbarians out of good defensive terrain by moving a weak unit 2 spaces away, and then attack it with the strong unit when it moved towards the weaker one - or one could keep the AI from attacking your city by making it chase around weaker units that it could never catch - nope, the AI only takes into consideration the strengths of units it can attack THAT TURN. If it can't attack a unit that turn, it bases it's decisions on other factors, such as unit proximity, improvements, etc.

Now, when deciding what city to attack, none of this matters. The AI does not cheat, if a barbarian unit is equidistant between two cities but it is not within visual range of either, there is no way it would know that it has a better chance attacking the player city which is defended by a 2.1 Warrior over the AI city defended by the 2.8 Warrior, because it doesn't know what's defending each city...for all it knows the player might have Archers in his city while the AI only has Warriors, in which case the AI city would be the easier target.

The barbarians do not distinguish between players and AIs directly, the only way it can tell the difference between the two is in unit strengths (due to the bonuses). The barbarian AI does not ever think 'I won't attack that city because it's defenders are too strong', this is evident because barbarians will attack cities where they have no chance at all of success. I've had barbarian warriors attack cities defended by Mechanized Infantry (yes, playing with the WorldEditor). If the barbarians did make that kind of distinction, they would have been better attacking ANY OTHER CITY than that one, yet still they moved units towards that city and still attacked it after being aware of the strength of the defenders.

[Spiderjeru]

While I think barbs can tend to come in slightly ridiculous numbers, I'm glad to learn that they prefer player targets. The computer is hopelessly incompetent at waging war as it is - I'd be pretty upset if the barbs won a domination victory.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Spiderjeru
While I think barbs can tend to come in slightly ridiculous numbers, I'm glad to learn that they prefer player targets.

Except in a few rare situations, they don't.